Published on the 06/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Despite green screen systems still being used in many organisations, CIOs say the systems are having a negative impact on end-user productivity, retention and recruitment…
A new study has revealed that more than half of CIOs and IT directors surveyed in A/NZ do not believe that green screen applications do a good job and claim that end-users feel bored, frustrated, ambivalent, or restricted when using these applications.
The study, conducted by independent research analyst Vanson Bourne on behalf of Micro Focus, surveyed 590 CIOs and IT directors, including 50 from the A/NZ region. The resulting report says that 86 percent of CIOs across A/NZ have had complaints from end users about aspects of their green screen applications. While the majority of organisations today still use green screen applications, 34 percent of the respondents said working with green screen applications is having a negative impact on end-user retention and recruitment.
The study cited a number of barriers to modernisation, including a lack of skills in-house to change the green screen applications and difficulty hiring new employees with prior knowledge of them or the ability to learn to use them quickly. The perceived role of IT also seems to be hampering improvements with respondents saying that while they believe their role in innovation is integral to the business, they believe that the majority of non-IT people see it as a business support or a maintenance function.
In addition 36 percent of CIOs believe it would be technically difficult to update the user interface and experience of green screen applications, while 30 percent of the IT leaders think it is too expensive to upgrade and too risky to contemplate.
According to the report authors however, 100 percent of the survey respondents said they believe there would be a positive impact on productivity if new capabilities were added to green screen applications.
Commenting on the research results, Derek Britton, Director of Product Marketing at Micro Focus which commissioned the research, said: “Today’s end-user expects mobility, efficiency and simplicity from their business applications, and the same experience on any device, whenever, wherever. The accepted wisdom is that you cannot provide this from green screen systems – but that isn’t true.
“It is possible to both quickly and cheaply modernise green screen systems, delivering new features that take advantage of Windows, the internet and mobile devices, without any application code change or disruption to the end user community.”
If green screen applications were to be upgraded, the survey respondents said the most important areas to improve would be integration with common software packages like Microsoft Excel, Skype and other VoIP systems, Google Maps, SAP and Salesforce (60 percent); productivity enhancements such as pop-up calendars, dropdown menus, tool tips, hyperlinks, in line help and graphs (58 percent); mobile access to green screen applications (54 percent);and a modern, fresh and user-friendly interface delivered through browser technology (44 percent).
